After the late homeless activist Mitch Snyder estimated the number of homeless Americans at three million, a number which he later admitted to Ted Koppel on "Nightline" was made up, having "no meaning, no value," that number stood as the most commonly quoted figure in the media.

But now a Clinton Administration plan for dealing with the homeless says that during the late 1980s as many as seven million Americans were homeless. Paul Schmelzer, of the National Coalition for the Homeless, commented that the seven million figure was derived from New York City and Philadelphia housing records which were then extrapolated nationally over a five-year period.

When the Census Bureau measured the number of homeless on a single day as part of its 1990 Census, it came up with a figure of fewer than 230,000. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences and the Department of Housing and Urban Development arrived at similar numbers.

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